Born in Hampshire in
1960, Colin Firth spent part of his childhood in Nigeria, where his
father taught history. He is best known for his roles in the BBC
adaptation of Pride and Prejudice and the film Bridget Jones's Diary.
He lives in London and Italy with his wife Livia Giuggioli, an Italian
documentary film maker, and their sons Luca and Mateo.

Colin
Firth will forever be remembered as the perfect Mr Darcy—rich,
handsome, chivalrous and, as many women will recall, very fetching in a
dripping wet shirt.

So what does he drive? A
classic Jaguar perhaps, or maybe something discreet from Bentley? No,
until a couple of years ago at least, Firth, 46, was to be found behind
the wheel of a dependable Morris Minor. He was still happily driving
his very first car, bought in his twenties for £2,000. It might
not have won over Bridget Jones, but it was good enough for him.

“I am not a Bentley sort
of chap,” he confides, fresh from a film screening in Cannes, where the
streets are lined with some of the sleekest, most expensive cars in the
world.

The key to understanding
Firth is to recall the sort of roles he took before the BBC adaptation
of Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice turned him into a sex symbol and
national treasure in 1995.

He first made his mark in
1984 in the award-winning stage production of Another Country, then
played alongside Kenneth Branagh in 1987 as a stuttering first world
war soldier in the film version of JL Carr’s novel A Month in the
Country. He then sealed his reputation as an actor with a gripping
performance as Falklands officer Robert Lawrence in the powerful 1988
television film Tumbledown.

But after Darcy just
about anything became possible, whether the Arsenal fanatic in Fever
Pitch, the ridiculous Lord Wessex in Shakespeare in Love or winning
over Bridget Jones in two box office hits.

“I was working at edgy,
serious stuff for years,” he says, “but a lot of it wasn’t seen. I
remember doing Master of the Moor, playing a character who chopped
people’s heads off.

“Yet it is things like
Bridget Jones which stick to your skin, and I stepped on a timebomb
with Mr Darcy in Pride and Prejudice.”

It was a life-changing
experience for Firth, bringing instant fame and an adoring female fan
base. Yet he was advised not to take on the role of the brooding Darcy.
“I could not have been more wrong for it,” he says. “I am totally
unlike Mr Darcy. I talk like a blue streak, I don’t own a horse or
acres of property. I’m a secondary-modern schoolkid with no links to
nobility. Yet I played this taciturn, dark, sexy guy and everyone
remembers it.”

Rather than riding
manfully across his sweeping country estate on his trusty steed, Firth
is now the rather sheepish owner of a petrol-electric hybrid Toyota
Prius. “I don’t want to come across as worthy,” he says apologetically,
“but I have never been excited by big, high-powered cars. They look
okay, I suppose, but they are just not for me.”

Firth was on the verge of
buying a humble Honda Civic hybrid before opting for Hollywood’s latest
fad car for A-listers keen to promote their green credentials. Despite
his protestations about not wanting to appear worthy, he has a
reputation as a celebrity do-gooder. He recently threw his weight
behind a campaign to help Congolese asylum seekers who were threatened
with deportation from the UK and has also spoken out in favour of fair
trade.

His former co-star Rupert
Everett has described him as “boring” and a “ghastly guitar-playing
redbrick socialist who was going to give his first half-million to
charity”. The pair fell out in 1984 while performing in Another
Country, sealed their mutual antipathy during filming for The
Importance of Being Earnest in 2002, but recently made up on the set of
the new St Trinian’s film, to be released in December, in which Firth
plays the education minister Geoffrey Thwaites.

His latest project is a
film made with his wife Livia. She is producer and he executive
producer of In Prison My Whole Life, a documentary recounting the story
of the political activist Mumia Abu-Jamal, who was sentenced to death
in America in 1982 for killing a police officer. The verdict was
overturned in 2001 because of errors made in the original hearing.

“It is very politically
sensitive and has to be launched in the right way,” says Firth. “Did he
really do it? I honestly don’t know. My wife is the producer and the
real powerhouse behind the film, which is wonderful.”

Firth’s parents both grew
up in India, where his grandparents were involved in missionary work,
and his mother became a lecturer there in comparative religion. He
feels uneasy with the trappings of fame, be they flash cars, Alist
parties or sycophantic flunkies.

“Once you’re a celebrity,
it seems you don’t play by the same rules as the rest of society,” he
says. “People will be nice to you all day long for no other reason than
they’ve seen you in movies.

“So you need to find
something other than your celebrity to give you strength and your life
some meaning. Otherwise you can end up in rehab – or worse.

“A lot of people fall
apart because they get too much of it. When I look back I realise that
those are the people who had nothing more than celebrity to keep them
going.”

Although it’s hard to
imagine Firth ever ending up in a Lindsay Lohan-style dash to rehab, he
claims it is his home life that has kept his feet firmly on the ground.

He says the new Prius
will be ideal for his young family. He and Livia
were married in 1997 and now divide their lives between Italy and
London with their two boys – Luca, 6, and Mateo, 3. Firth also has a
16-year-old son, William, from a previous relationship with Meg Tilly,
the American actress he met when they co-starred in Valmont in 1989.

“My family, my wife and
children and a handful of very close friends are what have kept me
going,” he says.

“If I get less money and
less fame than some people, it just does not matter to me. I have never
been an enormous star. The tragedy can be that when you have had a
career which has soared, there is nowhere to go but to fall.”

On his CD changer

It varies, but I’ve just
been listening to Sky Blue Sky—the new album by
Wilco which is great